BF-Digitale Zukunft - Equal Opportunities in a Digital Future? On the Development of Media Literacy among Socially Disadvantaged Young People

A proficient way of dealing with digital media has become a main competence within our digitalized societies. Thus, it is important to help children and youngsters to develop these skills. However, digital literacy is not evenly distributed. Children from families with lower socio-economic status tend to have lower skills. The question is why. How does their lifewordly conditions shape the way they learn to deal with digital media? Why and under which conditions does this lead to deficits? What can we do about this? To find answers to these questions, the project investigates how socially disadvantaged young people develop digital literacy within their specific living conditions. It combines a quantitative survey in schools with qualitative case analysis of selected families. In doing so, it takes into account the experiences of children, parents as well as teachers and sheds light on the problem from different perspectives.